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Route Stanstead Abbots - Amwell Nature Reserve County Hertfordshire Difficulty Easy Distance 5km (3 miles) Typical time Two hours OS grid reference TL395115, Explorer 194 and Explorer 174 Starting point The station at Stanstead Abbots

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Blister rating: 1/5 View rating: 3/5

Why I love this walk

This is a short walk in the Lee Valley, 20 miles north of London. It is centred on the famous New River — new in 1609-13, when it was built by a banker, Sir Hugh Myddelton, to take fresh water from the well-known springs of Great Amwell to London. It still does, now under the protection of Thames Water.

The walk starts at St Margaret’s station in the village of Stanstead Abbots. The tarmac footpath that runs north along its left bank soon becomes a grassy track and takes you through a meadow and a gloomy wood, with a chiffchaff and a blackcap singing in the trees.

Suddenly you are in a churchyard, in the shadow of yews, with fine but crumbling Regency tombs and the graves over-run with violets, primroses and wood anemones. The village stocks are near the gate, and opposite is an excellent pub, the George IV. You are now in Amwell. Try the Hertfordshire sausages with onion gravy.

Wind your way down the leafy hill and cross the New River. The path could take you all the way to London, but turn left to the birders’ delight of the Amwell Nature Reserve, with its cormorants nesting in a willow tree, and three hides to watch lapwings, dainty gadwalls and the shovelers with their beaks like shoehorns.

The route

1 Turn right out of the station car park and go over the railway line along Station Road. Cross over Amwell Land and continue past a roundabout.

2 Shortly you will cross a bridge over the New River. Here turn right alongside the river on a tarmac path with the river on your right. Keep the bungalows on your left and, at the end of the row, keep straight on along a grassy path that follows an embankment.

3 You will shortly meet a well-defined path coming from the left; bear right along it. Pass some houses on your left and the path soon enters a meadow through a broken fence.

4 Follow the path straight ahead through the meadow and it soon leads into woodland.

5 The path shortly runs alongside a boundary wall. Keep along this path into a graveyard. Keep along the top edge of the graveyard.

6 Cross another path and continue along the top edge of the graveyard to the churchyard gate of St John the Baptist.

7 To the left is the George IV public house. Turn right down the lane. Directly opposite the church, take a path sloping down on the left to a footbridge. To your left is a monument to Sir Hugh Myddleton, and just over the road is Emma’s Well: there is a verse about her on a stone in bushes beside the fence next to the road.

8 Turn right along the concrete path beside the New River. Pass a war memorial on the left.

9 Take the next path on the left, which descends some steps to the road. Cross the road and take the track directly opposite, which leads over the railway line.

10 At the signboard for the Amwell Walkway, take the track to the left into some trees.

11 Within 150m you will reach a crossroads. Turn left and shortly you will go up some steps. This path now follows part of the old Buntingford railway line. Continue over the River Lee.

12 Immediately turn right along a stony track with the river on your right and Amwell Nature Reserve on your left. Cross the next bridge over the Lee.

13 Immediately take the path to your left alongside the right-hand bank of the River Lee. Pass Stanstead Lock and shortly you will reach a path sloping up beside a bridge.

14 Turn right along the road, with the Jolly Fisherman Public House on your left, to reach the car park entrance on the right.

Source: walkingworld.com

Contributor: Abigail Hamilton-Thompson. Walk: No 3004

Things to see: A pleasant, easy walk taking in woodlands, an atmospheric churchyard and the bustling birdlife of the nature reserve.

Pub rating: 3/5

Pub: The George IV pub, Great Amwell
Good food and real ales available at this welcoming, traditional hostelry.

Where to stay

Hertford House Hotel
A townhouse hotel in a 300 year old Georgian-style building in the centre of Hertford.

The Salisbury Arms Hotel
Hertford's oldest hostelry, this hotel has been in the ownership of the Hertfordshire family brewers, McMullen, since 1891.

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